(I admit, a groaner pun)

The other day I was sitting having an afternoon beer in the only Gay Bar in town.

There used to be another one, but between its having been in a rather sketchy area and the havoc wreaked by a hatchet wielding person with some heavy issues back in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century it has been closed for a number of years.

Next to me were two young men; one was 25, the other ten years older. They began talking politics, and one proudly pointed out that he was Gay, a Catholic with a capital C, and a Republican, and both had decided to vote for the Republican candidate because, well, a Republican would be better for Gay people than a Democrat any day.

A patron in his forties, who should know better, also a Gay Republican, who would throw out generalities without any substance with which they readily and wholeheartedly agreed, was sitting on the opposite side of them from me

Part of the conversation with my questions went along these lines:

“Hillary Clinton is anti-Gay”.
“Why?”
“Oh, come on. Wake up and smell the roses.”

“Hillary should be in jail, not the White House.”
“Why?”
“Because of the illegal things she has done.”
“For instance?”
“Benghazi.”

“Donald Trump is pro-Gay”.
“Why?”
“He created jobs and didn’t discriminate. He’s a self made man who started with nothing and became a billionaire.”

“Unlike Obama, if Trump were president, that kid in North Korea would not have been arrested and sentenced to 15 years.”
“Why?”
“He would have prevented it.”
“How?”
“By making sure it didn’t happen.”
“How?”
“By preventing it”.

I was hearing Trump.

However, it was their praise of Republican support for the Gay Community that got me the most.

Here they are supporting people running for office who have proclaimed that if elected president they would nominate people to the Supreme Court who will undo the Court’s pro-Gay rulings in favor of marriage equality, work place protections, and discrimination in public accommodations.

From their conversation it was obvious that they are not aware that in spite of supposed nondiscrimination laws, many states are passing religious freedom bills which allow people to deny service to Gay people because of sincerely held religious beliefs, a term so broad that the belief may not actually be part of their religion’s tenets, but merely their own which, of course, muddies the water when it comes to actual religious belief vs personal prejudices.

They seem to be totally oblivious to the new Jim Crow laws cropping up in Republican run states that are directed at Gay people.

They were also unaware that annually, as some state legislatures open for the year, bills are proposed that overtly and covertly attempt to take away the basic civil rights of Gay people, reduce protections from school violence and parental abuse, hand certain civil rights over to the control of churches, and reduce Gay adults and student age Gay people to second class citizenship.

But, to put things in perspective:

At 25, the younger was born after the horrible worst days at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. He was eight when Ronald Reagan left office, and, so, would have no real recollection of the times or the man.

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In spite of the importance of these chapters, not offending conservative constituents took precedence over the lives of teenagers.

He was nine when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of Gay marriage, and 10 when the first wedding took place.

His boyfriend would have been ten years older when these events happened, so he would have been too young to understand the AIDS crisis in the 80s, and just coming of age for Weld’s work and Gay marriage, and when things were quite positive for the Gay Community in the state.

Neither had to face what earned them the rights they take for granted, and neither is aware of what is happening in other states in the attempt to rollback hard earned and fought for rights.

Neither is aware that, although the hatchet event may have been a local rarity and a shock, attacks at Gay bars or in parking lots near them are not uncommon in other places, often encouraged by politicians and clergy, if not directly, at least by poorly veiled suggestions.

They are not aware, nor did they seem inclined to learn that in the years when their idolized Reagan was president and his party very vocal in the name of Jesus, politicians advocated for internment camps for people who tested positive for HIV and refusing to allow any visitations from family and friends unless they were willing to never leave.

They have no idea that the person who was caring for a dying partner could be refused visitation rights by the very family who had turned their backs on the dying person when he told them he was gay.

They have no idea that once the dying person entered the hospital the person’s significant other, regardless of how long they had been together, would never see them alive again, while the other would die alone as the rejecting parents would stay away. They never had to face not being allowed to attend their partner’s funeral, often being physically prevented. The graveside ceremony had to be witnessed from afar with a tearful prayer over the fresh grave having to wait until everyone had gone.

And I am sure they have never had to experience the anger when visiting a dying friend who, when in the hospital, was placed alone in a room away from other occupied rooms, and the janitorial crew threw the red hazardous material bags into the room with him while some of his friends were in the room visiting.

They have no idea that a Gay person could be refused medical and dental care because of the fear of contaminated blood, while the joke, “how do you prevent the spread of AIDS? Kill a faggot” went beyond the verbal into the physical.

They have no idea that we got spit on, attacked, faced loss of home and job, and that was just for being Gay, even if HIV negative, and that the three words “I am Gay” was equivalent in most people’s minds to the three words “I have AIDS”.

They do not realize that in other states your job, your home, your family can still be threatened, and that, under certain circumstances, this is so in their own progressive state.

They do not know that if a Gay couple were to have to move to certain other states because of a job or military related transfer, if anything happens to the biological parent of a shared child, the non biological parent could be considered a stranger to the child by the state because certain states neither allow internal gay adoption, nor recognize those from other states.

And for some reason, perhaps because she is a celebrity, they believed Caitlyn Jenner when she claimed the Republican Party is better for Gay people as opposed the other party and that no Republican is on record talking against Gay rights and specifically those of the community’s Transgender members.

They have no idea what it was to fear for your life on a regular basis as physical attacks would go unaddressed, and a murder could be excused if the murderer simply said the victim had come on to them and they panicked.

They do not know the feeling when a reported and documented death threat was brushed aside with the excuse that if you didn’t say you were Gay, or came across as Gay, the threat would never have been made, and that if you let people know you were Gay, well, you had to accept the consequences of that.

They also seemed quite unaware that the major Republican candidates willingly attended and gave speeches at a conference run by a pastor who has spoken in favor of killing Gays, and that one of the remaining candidates has a kill-the-Gays person as a campaign adviser.

But Fox says Hillary is a criminal, so that is good enough for them.

Never mind asking why poor Southerners vote against their own best interests when supporting the Republican Party, the question is if these two young Gay men and those their age who think like them will be ready to accept what they have supported.

It is one thing to not have your rights, it is worse if you have had them, and they are taken away.
No amount of “But….But….” will rectify the situation.

But when you have been living with the results of the hard work of others, and work only with your own, a global view is lacking.

And that is where the danger comes in.

They will remain blind to any movement against them as they will not take the time to look into the uncomfortable topic, but will prefer to assume things have always been, and will remain, just fine.

And they plan to vote for the very people that have threatened them without their paying attention to that.

After a while they then went on to a serious discussion of who should prevail on RuPaul’s Drag race, and I returned to my beer and to feeling rather old.